louie tran spot – daily gadget blog

Wow it’s been over a month since I posted anything on this site. I’ve been quite busy at work and basically eat, take a shower, and then sleep when I get home. And then on the weekends I just run errands and try to catch a movie if I can. Anyway, my weekend project this week was upgrading my MacBook Pro 15″ 1.83Ghz Core Duo’s SuperDrive.

I have the first generation MacBook Pro that comes with the crappy UJ-857C drives that are very unreliable and unpredictable with a GSA-S10N Superdrive I got on eBay for SuperDrive. I followed the guide at ifixit.com and it was incredibly easy.

It took less than an hour to do (MacBook Pro has so many screws!) but it was a great experience in opening up the Mac and learning how easy it was to replace the parts.

I now have a much more reliable drive and Dual Layer capabilities and couldn’t be happier! I feel like getting a whole new laptop for the price of $50! I also upgraded to Leopard from Tiger and am enjoying it. Finally running Windows 7 native on the MacBook Pro without Parallels and it makes a huge difference.

Windows 7 running on the Sony Vaio P using the HP w2207 monitor!

Yesterday I went to go an external DVD burner for my Vaio P ‘netbook’ so I dropped by Fry’s electronics and picked up a generic one for $69. Big mistake! First of all, it has to be plugged into two USB ports and the cable that it comes with won’t reach both sides. Second of all, I tried it on my desktop and even though Windows detects the drive, it won’t read ANY discs so it’s going back to Fry’s tomorrow. Instead of making the long drive back to do a return, I just went to the Best Buy in Pasadena and bought the LG Super Multi Drive for $80 and it worked perfectly.

Right after creating the restore discs for the Vaio P, I deleted the recovery partition using the Windows XP disc I had laying around and then rebooted the notebook. I then got an error saying that it can’t find the boot partition! I just shook my head and then popped in the Windows 7 beta DVD I had to repair the boot drive. I was happy to see the familiar Windows Vista loading screen and then it went blank afterwards. I didn’t REALLY want to restore the whole thing again which was why I was hoping that it would work. Since I had to do it anyway, I restarted and went on with the Windows 7 Build 7000 installation. After it was completed, I ran Windows Update and  then downloaded all the drivers off the Sony Website for the Vaio P (Vista drivers work fine). Just remember to download the Sony Shared Library files and to turn off UAC to get the function keys to work properly.

When I completed installing all the programs I use on the road which are Microsoft Office 2007, FireFox, Digsby, Combined Community Codec Pack, and AVG Antivirus, I then proceeded to move about Windows, played a few songs and videos. I don’t know if it’s just me but the OS itself felt sluggish and a few steps SLOWER than Windows Vista. That was around 2:30AM so I thought maybe I was just tired and then I went to sleep leaving the hard drive to defrag.

I woke up the next day (which is today, 3 hours ago), I restarted the notebook and noticed that Windows 7 loads up at least a minute quicker than Vista. Everything else however, was still sluggish. I’m not sure I went to check the Windows rating on this and it scored a pathetic 1.2. I’m not sure how people with the same hardware configuration get a score of 1.5 – 1.9. I’m thinking that it could be the build that I have which is why I’m waiting for Build 7077 to finish downloading at the time of this writing. Once, that’s done I’ll load it up and see how much better, worse or the same it is.

I also have at least 5 reviews that I have to complete for this site!

I’ve been experimenting with KK’s Loaded ROM and have been quite impressed with it because of the apps that come preloaded with it. However, it wasn’t as quick as Mighty’s and the battery life doesn’t even come close. However, KK has updated to 1.5 and the version I was using at the time was .9 so I’m sure KK made a lot of tweaks and fixes to his ROM. 

Anyway, Mighty’s 4.9.3 addressed the issue I had with dialing local calls using the dial pad that I already have stored on my contacts list without including the area code and it shows up as an unknown number.  Also included is the World Card application and a whole bunch of tweaks and fixes. Mighty already released 4.9.4 yesterday and I have yet to run and install it. This release should hopefully address the glitches in Opera from the previous version. You can get Mighty’s ROM here.

If you Touch Pro owners are still running the stock ROM, you are missing out on a lot. These modified ROMs make a huge difference in performance and battery life and the process in flashing the ROM is practically automated.

I didn’t get a chance to do any updates today because my webhost’s server Dream Host has been down all day! And the timing is as horrible as the situation too because this is the day that Mac World and CES both start! UGH! It’s extremely frustrating but at least it’s up for now.

Besides… I’m not even sure if anyone is reading this anyway…

I just quickly added the about section and made a few tweaks to the layout. I’m going to watch one more episode of Heroes and then go to sleep. I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow and I should hopefully be done with the site by then, the day after.

This is the first post to test if everything works. I just registered with Dream Host using a coupon code 202, thanks to lifehacker which gives me two years of hosting for less than $11. I actually did it this morning, and ran into a whole mess of problems getting this site to work because their servers were flooded with people trying to take advantage of this awesome deal. The only reason why I even came up witht his site was because it’s so cheap and I spent most of the day trying to brainstorm what to do with it.

I’m currently in the middle of watching Heroes straming from Netflix onto my Xbox  360 so I’ll work on this some more after the episode finishes!